(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all mistakes found.)
GREGORY THAUMATURGOS
ON ALL THE SAINTS.(1)
(Dubious or spurious)
[Translated by the Rev. S.D.F. Salmond, M.A.]
GRANT thy blessing, Lord.
It was my desire to be silent, and not to make a public(2) display of
the rustic rudeness of my tongue. For silence is a matter of great
consequence when one's speech is mean.(3) And to refrain from utterance is
indeed an admirable thing, where there is lack of training; and verily he
is the highest philosopher who knows how to cover his ignorance by
abstinence from public address. Knowing, therefore, the feebleness of
tongue proper to me, I should have preferred such a course. Nevertheless
the spectacle of the onlookers impels me to speak. Since, then, this
solemnity is a glorious one among our festivals, and the spectators form a
crowded gathering, and our assembly is one of elevated fervour in the
faith, I shall face the task of commencing an address with confidence.(4)
And this I may attempt all the more boldly, since the Father(5) requests
me, and the Church is with me, and the sainted martyrs with this object
strengthen what is weak in me. For these have inspired aged men to
accomplish with much love a long course, and constrained them to support
their failing steps by the staff of the word;(6) and they have stimulated
women to finish their course like the young men, and have brought to this,
too, those of tender years, yea, even creeping children. In this wise have
the martyrs shown their power, leaping with joy in the presence of death,
laughing at the sword, making sport of the wrath of princes, grasping at
death as the producer of deathlessness, making victory their own by their
fall, through the body taking their leap to heaven, suffering their members
to be scattered abroad in order that they might hold(7) their souls, and,
bursting the bars of life, that they might open the. gates(8) of heaven.
And if any one believes not that death is abolished, that Hades is trodden
under foot, that the chains thereof are broken, that the tyrant is bound,
let him look on the martyrs disporting themselves(9) in the presence of
death, and taking up the jubilant strain of the victory of Christ. O the
marvel! Since the hour when Christ despoiled Hades, men have danced in
triumph over death. "O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy
victory?"(10) Hades and the devil have been despoiled, and stripped of
their ancient armour, and cast out of their peculiar power. And even as
Goliath had his head cut off with his own sword, so also is the devil, who
has been the father of death, put to rout through death; and he finds that
the selfsame thing which he was wont to use as the ready weapon of his
deceit, has become the mighty instrument of his own destruction. Yea, if we
may so speak, casting his hook at the Godhead, and seizing the wonted
enjoyment of the baited pleasure, he is himself manifestly caught while he
deems himself the captor, and discovers that in place of the man he has
touched the God. By reason thereof do the martyrs leap upon the head of the
dragon, and despise every species of torment. For since the second Adam has
brought up the first Adam out of the deeps of Hades, as Jonah was delivered
out of the whale, and has set forth him who was deceived as a citizen of
heaven to the shame of the deceiver, the gates of Hades have been shut, and
the gates of heaven have been opened, so as to offer an unimpeded entrance
to those who rise thither in faith. In olden time Jacob beheld a ladder
erected reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending
upon it. But now, having been made man for man's sake, He who is the Friend
of man has crushed with the foot of His divinity him who is the enemy of
man, and has borne up the man with the hand of His Christhood,(11) and has
made the trackless ether to be trodden by the feet of man. Then the angels
were ascending and descending; but now the Angel of the great counsel
neither ascendeth nor descendeth: for whence or where shall He change His
position, who is present everywhere, and filleth all things, and holds in
His hand the ends. of the world? Once, indeed, He descended, and once He
ascended,--not, however, through any change(1) of nature, but only in the
condescension(2) of His philanthropic Christhood;(3) and He is seated as
the Word with the Father, and as the Word He dwells in the womb, and as the
Word He is found everywhere, and is never separated from the God of the
universe. Aforetime did the devil deride the nature of man with great
laughter, and he has had his joy over the times of our calamity as his
festal-days. But the laughter is only a three days' pleasure, while the
wailing is eternal; and his great laughter has prepared for him a greater
wailing and ceaseless tears, and inconsolable weeping, and a sword in his
heart. This sword did our Leader forge against the enemy with fire in the
virgin furnace, in such wise and after such fashion as He willed, and gave
it its point by the energy of His invincible divinity, and dipped it in the
water of an undefiled baptism, and sharpened it by sufferings without
passion in them, and made it bright by the mystical resurrection; and
herewith by Himself He put to death the vengeful adversary, together with
his whole host. What manner of word, therefore, will express our joy or his
misery? For he who was once an archangel is now a devil; he who once lived
in heaven is now seen crawling like a serpent upon earth; he who once was
jubilant with the cherubim, is now shut up in pain in the guard-house of
swine; and him, too, in fine, shall we put to rout if we mind those things
which are contrary to his choice, by the grace and kindness of our Lord
Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the power unto the ages of the ages.
Amen.
Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland beginning in
1867. (ANF 6, Roberts and Donaldson). The digital version is by The
Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.
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